A 17-year-old Olympia boy who seemed to vanish on his way to football practice last year, then reappeared the day his mother's ex-boyfriend was found shot and stabbed to death, pleaded guilty Wednesday to murdering the man.
Gabriel Davies and Justin Yoon pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Pierce County Superior Court. Charging papers alleged they broke into an Orting home in the middle of the night in August 2022 clad in dark clothing, stole firearms and knives and killed Daniel McCaw. McCaw was left dead in his laundry room for days, only to be discovered by law enforcement after he didn't show up for work.
The teens have remained in custody on $1 million bail since they were arrested last year and charged as adults. After their guilty pleas were entered Wednesday morning, Judge Thomas Quinlan ordered them held without bail until sentencing, set for Nov. 3. With no prior criminal history, the teens face a sentencing range of 10 years, three months to 18 years, four months in prison.
Prosecutors will recommend Davies be sentenced to the low end of the standard range, though Quinlan noted he can impose a different sentence. The maximum term Davies and Yoon could see is life in prison.
Davies and Yoon, also 17, said little during the hearing beyond answering Quinlan's standard questions about whether they understood what they were pleading guilty to and that they were making their pleas freely. Both appeared unrestrained in blue clothes from Remann Hall, the county's juvenile detention center where they've been held.
An attorney for Davies, Brett Purtzer, said he wouldn't comment on the case in a brief phone call with The News Tribune on Tuesday. Yoon's attorney, Angela Horwath, was not immediately available to reply to a request for comment.
McCaw's mother also declined to comment on the outcome of the case. She and other relatives of the 51-year-old man attended the hearing, along with family and friends of the defendants.
Davies' story of disappearance, followed by his arrest shortly after being found, was a shocking tale for the Olympia community, which rallied around the teen when he was missing. Davies left his home for practice at Olympia High School on Aug 31, 2022, but never arrived, according to court records. That afternoon, Davies' truck was found abandoned. His phone was nearby, smashed, and the vehicle's steering wheel and door panel had blood on it. The Thurston County Sheriff's Office organized a press conference, bloodhounds were sent out, and tips of possible sightings were called in while the FBI helped analyze cell phone data.
By the time Davies was found and returned to his family, Thurston County investigators had received a phone call from Yoon's father saying he had information about a crime involving Davies.
At the time, detectives considered Yoon's information "purely speculative," according to investigative documents, but a long trail of evidence would soon point to both boys' involvement. According to charging documents, surveillance cameras at McCaw's home appeared to show Davies and Yoon approaching his backyard in the early hours of Aug. 28, three days before Davies' disappearance.
After Davies was arrested, he led investigators to where he said he dumped the weapons connected to McCaw's killing. Near the Old Olympia Brewery in Tumwater, detectives recovered a 9 mm handgun and a .45-caliber pistol — the same caliber as the bullets found in McCaw's body — as well as more than a dozen fixed blade and throwing knives.
A motive for the murder is not outlined in case filings, but court records in a long-running family law case showed Davies' mother, Amanda Olufson, moved in with McCaw in 2018. Davies' father, Kenneth, who filed to divorce Amanda in 2009, disapproved of the move and raised concerns about McCaw. He said the man displayed volatile behavior and threatened a person his daughter had been dating.
When he picked up his kids from McCaw's home for the first time, Kenneth Davies wrote in court filings that he saw security cameras and signs warning about trespassing and 24-hour surveillance. A Confederate flag flew just beneath a U.S. flag in the front yard. When his children got in the car, they told him McCaw also had a flag with a swastika.
McCaw admitted to owning a Nazi flag in a legal statement filed in the custody battle, but he claimed he was just a collector and also had a Japanese flag, Marine Corps flag and a pirate flag. He had lived in Orting since 2000, according to the filing, and police records showed he'd recently worked for NC Power Systems, an industrial equipment supplier.
The day Davies was arrested, his father told a Thurston County detective his son was involved in McCaw's death, and he claimed that the man's "biker buddies" directed him to steal something from a safe in McCaw's home, threatening to hurt him if he didn't do it. The father said Davies confided in Yoon, and the two made a plan to steal the item.
Pierce County Sheriff's Department detectives connected McCaw to the Amigos Motorcycle Club, a support club of the notorious Bandidos Motorcycle Club, but police reports released to The News Tribune didn't show evidence that club members played a role in the killing.
One detective noted in investigative documents that Davies told Olympia police that McCaw threatened him with a handgun in January 2022. Public records officials for the Olympia Police Department and Thurston County Sheriff's Office previously told the newspaper that they were not able to identify a corresponding incident in searches of law enforcement records.
